Hi. As you may know, I’ve opened the instance about 12 days ago. Right now, the instance is ranked 6th out of hundreds of instances.
We’re now using 4 vCPU and 16GB RAM server for 38€ which is very cheap (Not that cheap anymore. We’re using dedicated 16 CPU, 48GB RAM server for 160€). But we need donations to continue uploading media or even to increase the limit and move to a better server against instant load. Also we transfered 5TB of media only in 12 days 🤷♂️ Thanks to Cloudflare, this didn’t cause much trouble to us.
If you want to donate, here’s donation platforms we use:
- GitHub Sponsors: https://github.com/sponsors/xaegreal
- Trocador.app (crypto)
Note: I removed old crypto payment methods and Patreon kicked us. We got $182 with old crypto payment methods and $80 from Patreon.
Hello, team at LemmyNSFW,
I’m delighted to see your instance growing and I completely support the idea of donating to ensure the longevity and quality of this platform. Your hard work in maintaining and developing this instance is very much appreciated.
However, I’d like to bring up the idea of financial transparency within our community. Have you considered using a platform like Open Collective for your donation system? It has been adopted by other instances, including Lemmy.world. You can see an example of how they use it here: https://opencollective.com/mastodonworld
In my opinion, Lemmy.world is a shining example of how a Lemmy instance should operate financially. They provide transparency about their finances, which has greatly contributed to building trust with their users and the platform as a whole.
Considering we’re part of an open-source, decentralized platform, I believe this level of transparency is paramount. It not only helps in building trust but also encourages more users to donate, knowing exactly how their contributions will be utilized.
Moreover, seeing big instances openly donating back to the source code developers could set a wonderful precedent. This act of giving back to those who helped create the foundation of our platform would be a tremendous demonstration of gratitude and community spirit.
Again, I am wholeheartedly in support of donating to this community, and I hope my suggestion will be taken into consideration. Keep up the fantastic work!
Going to have to agree that something like this would be good. Lets people see all in one place where we stand and what is needed.
Yes. And I’m genuinely ok with big staff spends. Spend it on hookers and cocaine for all I care. All is like to see is that some percentage is committed and shown to be given back to the source code developers.
Agreed, there’s nothing wrong with making a living. 👍
I’d love to see if we could get enough donations going to distribute to content creators? Maybe this is a more mainstream instance/general purpose NSFW, but it would be very cool to see an instance giving ownership to its content creators.
Thank you for your opinion! I would like to do this too but we don’t use single payment method. Also does Open Collective approve payments or should we trust the admin for this? And do admins attach bills somewhere?
Open collective (of which I have zero affiliation) is working on taking cryptocurrency payments. Last I checked it was in beta.
You can give evidence where you feel it would be beneficial. But yeh. You could always find work arounds.
If it’s something you genuinely want to explore, I’m happy to volunteer some of my time to help you with implementing and managing that.
The key thing I’d like to see in all instances, not just yours, is transparency in income, plus some sort of transparency as to how much that may be given back to the community and the source code development.
Honestly. What’s done with the rest, I care very little.
Can you contact me from Matrix? my address is @xaeg:matrix.org
How big a proportion of potential supporters do you think would prefer to pay in crypto?
I’m in column A, but not column B. Just for “statistical purposes”.
If we were a non-NSFW instance, I wouldn’t add crypto but anonymity is important for some people (me included).
I definitely understand where you’re coming from, I was just attempting to debate cost/value.
Almost half of the supporters donating from crypto, so I don’t think its unnecessary.
Cool to know 🤘
I’d probably prefer pay in crypto. Also receive in crypto TBH. Just for anonymity’s sake.
I mean since you brought up crypto I accept that as a given.
Just think that most people aren’t into crypto as much as those who are into crypto like to think.
Oh no. I agree. I brought it up because the instance is already taking crypto payments.
Just a headsup if you’re trying to get on Open Collective, it looks like that might be another patreon scenario:
Yeah I checked TOS too. I thought it’s about posts shared on campaign page. Also Open Collective Europe didn’t reject us. But you are right. I’ll contact about this to Open Collective and fiscal host.
🫡 good idea.
Thank you so much for hosting this instance. I appreciate it and will help with a small contribution of a few dollars per month from now own. ❤️
Thank you! Every dollar is important and you can be sure that we will use every single dollar for this instance.
I joined this instance for the NSFW, but at the moment it is the best performing instance I am on, so I am subscribing to all my tech communities through here as well. In other words, my NSFW account is now my main account. LOL. Going to Patreon for sure.
EDIT: I signed up for $5/month. Keep up the good work!
PS: Would you mind sharing your docker-compose file? I want to deploy a lemmy instance on GCP to help strengthen the network.
Thank you for your support! But I really didn’t changed the compose file. I just used default ansible setup for simplicity.
May I ask where the server is hosted?
Currently Ukraine. May change in the future.
Oh nice. And what platform do you use?
I can’t say that for a while. I don’t want to doxx myself.
I don’t know how saying what platform is used to host the server will affect its security that much.
For example, the fact you are using cloudflare is public and doesn’t really harm you.
Yeah it doesn’t but its a shield in front of host itself. We’re not doing anything illegal here but still.
I mean, it would be trivial to find for anyone who cares to run a ping and do a Google search for the IP it resolves. You’re definitely not shielding yourself from any government agencies by keeping it secret.
The reason they won’t reveal is because Pornography is flat out banned in Ukraine, if we revealed this someone might report us and get the host taken away again, similar to what happened when the server used Hetzner.
Probably a really stupid and ignorant question, but how are you hosting in Ukraine when they are at war?
They need money now more than before. Why would they stop exporting stuff?
People still live, work and study over there. The country is big and the front is away from many people lives.
I set up a Patreon subscription. I am a DevOps Engineer. If you ever need to move to a more distributed setup let me know.
Thank you for your support! But to keep costs low, we had to keep for one server for now. But you’re in my mind if needed :)
I don’t know if you already run on docker, but you could run on docker in order to simulate a distributed setup and be able to move the various pieces in and out as needed, also portainer and traefik are very nice for this, if you create a common network for all containers with a bit of docker compose magic you have a plug and play kind of setup
If u need it I have a HomeLab where I can host an instance of it
I support you my friend both monetarily and conceptually.
You’re one of the people I’ve seen from the very beginning. Thank you for your support!
Out of curiosity how much storage are you using either total or on average with this instance? I feel like with the amount of media being uploaded it’s likely slightly larger than others.
It was about 30GB when I checked two days ago.
Edit: it’s 33 now.
Could consider utilising storage buckets for this - Backblaze B2 is $0.005 per GB/month and has partnerships with Cloudflare etc. Should reduce your costs pretty well.
Have you checked IONOS?
Done via GitHub, thanks for your work!
Really appreciated! Although Github works for now, we may change it in future btw.
It is done. Via github if that is okay.
Thank you! Github is the best among these options
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Thank you! People using lensdump, catbox.moe for this. You can still use this site tho.
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It should be good old timeout issue. I’ll check it tomorrow.
Try a file that is smaller than 1MB in size, otherwise you will have to use an external image/video hosting site like https://catbox.moe/ or https://redgifs.com/
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I will fix this one. It’s about timeouts.
Yeah I get this frequently too, it seems smaller files have a higher chance of being uploaded which makes sense.
I suggest you to use XRP, TRX and LTC for cheap transaction fees and speed, and check out a VPS provider called IONOS.
Edit: I suggest you BTW to open an OnlyFans and Fansly account for the instance and try to carry creators to the platform maybe you can make a special community for them and get some extra donations.
How would I donate via Ethereum or Monero? I’ve avoided all crypto.
It’s about your platform. For instance I’m using Binance, so I click Receive, choose type of coin, enter address, choose network (for me always default one), send.
Do you accept ETH on L2s? What about stablecoins?
I really don’t know. I’m just using MetaMask for ETH. And not using stable coins because I don’t know how to keep them locally, like MetaMask, MyMonero or XUMM. I really don’t want to keep them on an exchange that has all my info.
Pretty sure MetaMask supports USDC and USDT no? Stable coins can definitely be kept in a self-custody wallet like other ETH tokens.
Wow looks like it really supports! So what should I share here for it? Is it same with ETH or what?
Didn’t know GitHub sponsors was a thing.
Neat.
(Also: new sponsor).
If I can make one request (not that I feel you should be in any way honored to follow it up or prioritize it):
The local blur policy/implementation is horrible.
I want to just scroll through content. Everytime I log in I must update the settings.
http://wefwef.app doesn’t even give me an option to adjust it.
We had local settings to auto expand, disable blur etc. but these settings has gone with the new update. I’m adding right now.
I’m not related to Wefwef or other apps, but you can try others like Mlem or Memmy.
Fully aware it’s unaffiliated, just that local settings was bad concept.
Yep. It’s a cheap patch more than a feature. We have to modify lemmy, lemmy-ui, lemmy-js-client to achieve this feature to be able synchronise to server. @trusted_pizza@lemmynsfw.com made a pull request for this, but its still blocked.
Liftoff! app (beta) is my favorite for one-handed scrolling, if you gnome say’n. Double tap to zoom full screen, double tap twice to zoom to full resolution.
